A Tribute to Anne C. Flanders

Anne Christine Lawson grew up in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. When she was a girl, the countryside was dotted with small farms, like that of her father George Lawson. The farm lies perhaps a mile from Seneca Lake, at the point which the land levels off from the sloping lakeside. The childhood home of noted writer Max Eastman was just down the road in Glenora. George Lawson was an electrical engineer who decided he would rather farm than deal with the politics of industry. He had been employed by the Rochester, New York trolley company.

Anne enjoyed a happy childhood on the farm, with her mother Alice, and her sister Martha and brother Bill. She helped in the barn and played and swam in the lake and Big Stream that bordered the far fields of the farm. She remembered playing ball with the family and neighbors at Fourth of July celebrations. She was a switch hitter, which bothered some opposing pitchers no end.

 
Her father raised chickens for some time, specializing in the kosher market for New York City, which occasionally entailed rabbi's visiting the farm to conduct inspections to see that it met the strict dietary and other standards to qualify as a kosher chicken supplier. Later her brother Bill would turn to dairying, and today his son George raises Angus cattle on the same pastures that Mom roamed as a child.

 
Like many children in rural districts, Anne attended a small one-room school house known as the Beartown School. The student body numbered less than twenty scholars. One of her teachers was May Fulkerson, whose granddaughter Jane married her brother Bill's son William. Anne attended Dundee High School from which she graduated in 1937.

 
After graduating, Anne left the farm for college. She graduated with a nursing degree from The University of Rochester in 1942. Her first work experience in nursing was working as a visiting nurse in the Italian neighborhoods of Rochester. Not long thereafter she decided to work at the Sage Memorial Hospital in Ganado, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. She worked there from 1942 to 1945. Nancy and I were privileged to be with Mom when she revisited Ganado in 1983 and was able to meet one of her old friends there. It was a joyous moment for her.

In the 1940's before the Second World War began, Mom first met Dad who was working at the Gleason Machine Works in Rochester. He was out cross-country skiing when, on an impulse, he dropped in on a Presbyterian youth meeting. He met Mom and immediately asked her out. They reunited after Dad's stint in the Army, and were married in 1946. Mom had returned to New York after the war where she volunteered working with returning soldiers. She also worked as a visiting nurse in Rochester. In 1946 she moved to Montpelier with Dad and soon after I came along, followed by eight other brothers and sisters at regular intervals.

After several years of renting apartments in Montpelier the growing Flanders family bought the house in East Montpelier where Mom and Dad have now lived for more than fifty years.

As her brood grew, Mom remained the center of her children's world, always there for us, picking us up after we fell, encouraging and supporting us as we spread our wings. It was a simpler time. Brazier Road had but few farms and a few ex-farmhouses like ours. In the winter, the plow stopped at our house. Sometimes it didn't make it for a few days and we would pull our groceries in on a sled from Towne Hill Road. The rocky pastures and orchards had not filled in with second-growth forest. As we children explored this landscape, we knew that when we got home, supper would be on the table, a bedtime story would be read, and we would be tucked in with the admonition to "sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite."

 
Mom stayed home with the children for a few years, then she resumed her nursing career. She was the director of the Montpelier Health Center from 1967 to 1970. She ended her nursing days as a staff nurse for the Vermont Department of Public Health in its Barre office. In this capacity she roamed the back roads of the rural districts serving the children and families of those who lived far from the doctors and hospitals in the towns. She helped organize parenting groups in a number of towns.

 
Her community activities included chairing the East Montpelier Zoning Commission, holding offices in the PTA, and serving as the Chairperson of the Health Center in Plainfield.

Of course there was church, plenty of church. Us older ones grew up on a strict regimen of Sunday School lessons. Who could forget Mom's weekly recitations of missionary letters, from the Wien's in Italy or the leper colony in Formosa? Then we would come home from church for the big Sunday dinner of pot roast, rice and peas.

 
She was an active member of the Calvary Gospel Church on Elm Street in Montpelier and then became a communicant at the Christ Church Episcopal in Montpelier.

 
Somehow Mom got us out of bed and off to school every day. Going to school for those of us who went to East Montpelier involved a half mile walk either to the corner of Brazier and Towne Hill Road, or sometimes across the field to the Hawkins' Farm. As I remember generally we would go the Hawkins route on the way home. One afternoon Mom told the story of hearing the children crying down in the field. She rushed outside to find out what was the matter. One of us plaintively wailed "We want to be home already!"

Often when we burst in through the door on a cold day, Mom would insist on grabbing us and getting to kiss our "spring water cheeks."

Mom was a fiercesome gardener. No weed was safe around her, as we children could attest. One of our daily summer chores was "weeding" the garden. This had to be done before any fun activities could begin. The weed community breathed easier when age hampered her ability to get out between the rows.

 
At one point Mom kept a box in the back of the station wagon with a shovel. When she saw a pile of horse manure in the road she would leap out and pick it up. This was long before the words ecology and recycling were in the public vocabulary.

She loved animals. She had a pet crow by the name of Jupiter as a teenager. It would fly down and land on her head. Norma Raymond, a long-time neighbor, remembers a trip to Springfield to visit Grandfather Ernest. Great Uncle Ralph called to request help in disposing a raccoon caught at Smiley Manse in a have a heart trap. Mom and Norma went to the rescue, helping husband Ralph transport the hapless raccoon miles out into the forest to a new home. When a neighbor's new calf refused to eat Mom was called to the rescue. She took charge, and soon the calf was happily drinking from a bucket of powdered milk.

 
Many of Mom's friends recall her welcoming and friendly nature. Few are the neighbors who have not spent time with her at the battered old oak dining table in front of the picture window. Her neighbor Paul remembers how warmly she greeted his family when they first moved to Brazier Road. He remembers an invitation for cider and donuts in the midst of a snowstorm that dissuaded him from a dreary trek to work.

Paul worked with Mom in her time as a children's advocate in divorce cases, and he recalls how ably she navigated the treacherous waters of family conflict, and her ability to grasp the whole emotional picture at hand, putting warring spouses at ease, even as she fulfilled her duty to the children. He tells of walking with her in Montpelier and seeing her stopped by almost every other person to talk..

 
Speaking of walking... Mom was a champion walker and never happier than when she was out with her children or a favorite dog like Coco. To her a hill was like a weed, something to be briskly disposed of in order to enjoy the view from the top. Unlike the weeds, however, I am sure that the hills around her house will miss her light step on the gravel roads.

 
It has often been said that history is the story of the deeds of Great Men. Millions of words and gallons of ink have been spent describing the lives and motivations of those who held the fate of nations in their hands. Only recently has the door been opened a crack for the aspirations of women. When Anne Lawson was born in 1918 women in the United States did not have the right to vote. She remembered the excitement on the election day when her mother cast her first vote.

 
The caring professions like nursing and teaching were the only avenues open to women who wanted to participate in the world beyond home and hearth. Mom was one of those who saw the light radiating from that slightly opened door and marched boldly through it. Her march never stopped. For those who knew her and loved her she served as an inspiration that a better world is possible. Her light shines as brightly in our memory as that of any black-clad statesman. And of her it can truly be said that she made this fragile planet a better place.

 
Jon Flanders